the better idea I actually think it is. I look at it this way: On January 1, everybody will be home and watching TV, mostly football. Of course, the NHL isn't going to beat any football game in ratings, and I they know that. Hell, they can't even beat a dog show anymore. But they have a chance to get better ratings than they normally would just because so many more people will be watching TV, so that means millions more potenetial viewers. So even if some curious people tune in for a little while, the ratings points go up. The NHL and NBC is not trying to compete so much as ride the coattails of one of the best TV watching days of the year. If they buried this game in February, a few weeks after the Super Bowl, it would have no chance of getting anything, because nobody's going to think to tune in. In the NHL world, this game will kill it's normal US ratings.

Also, the Rose Bowl--the only BCS Bowl game being played that day--usually doesn't start until 4 or 5 ET I believe, so hockey won't interfere with anything major, maybe the Outback Bowl or the whatever bowl places the 5th place SEC team vs. the 8th place Big East team. The Bowls are so spread out now that there's actually a small window that day to lure in some potential viewers. It's a risk the NHL would be stupid not to take.